2019 AJFF On Campus

About AJFF On Campus

The Atlanta Jewish Film Festival continues its commitment to harnessing the power of cinematic storytelling to educate high school and college students about current events, historical topics and global communities through the AJFF On Campus initiative, returning to Emory University September 15-17 and expanding to Pace Academy with a screening on September 5. AJFF On Campus at Emory will include five narrative and documentary favorites from past festivals, exhibited across three days at the Goodrich C. White Hall auditorium. A new partnership with Pace Academy will feature an encore presentation in the Fine Arts Center of the documentary Witness Theater, a behind-the-scenes look at an intergenerational program which brings together Holocaust survivors and high school students.

AJFF On Campus is open to Pace Academy and Emory University students, faculty, and staff, as well as the general public. Both events will feature past AJFF film favorites, and special guest speakers.

More About AJFF on Campus at Pace Academy

Witness Theater
Documentary • USA • 2018 • 74 minutes

Harnessing the performing arts to bridge to the past, Witness Theater brings Holocaust survivors together with high school students to reenact the survivors' touching stories. As the Shoah's last elders live their final years, the number able to bear witness dwindles. Seeking to transmit these stories to the next generation, a New York drama therapist uses a unique program of staged testimonies. Over nine months of workshops, survivors and teenagers meet, share and listen, their blossoming friendships culminating in a public performance, keeping history alive through theatrical storytelling. World Premiere at 2019 AJFF.

Starting at 6:00 PM, teens are invited to a pre-show self-expression station hosted by VOX ATL, a youth-development nonprofit where teens speak and Atlanta listens. VOX ATL will have the tools of video, audio and art for teens to dialogue about human rights, discrimination, diversity and whatever is on their minds.

More about AJFF On Campus at Emory University

Go for Zucker
Narrative • Germany • 2004 • 95 minutes

The idea of a German-Jewish comedy would have been unthinkable in recent decades, but Go for Zucker is a daring black comedy that lampoons Jewish life in Germany and shatters post-war taboos in the process.

A 2004 box office smash, and critical and cultural phenomenon in Germany, the film is said to be the first German-Jewish comedy since World War II. Go for Zucker follows the frenetic life of Jackie Zucker (a hysterical, award-winning performance by Henry Hübchen), a chronic liar, cheat and hustler living in Berlin who has abandoned his career, family and Jewish roots since the fall of the Wall. Broke and beaten, his notorious gambling has finally caught up with him. When word comes that his mother has died and left him a sizable inheritance, it’s a stroke of luck. But there’s a catch: Jackie must first reconcile with his lost and estranged brother Samuel, an Orthodox Jew living in Frankfurt. The inevitable clash of traditions paves the way for a madcap adventure that finds Jackie sneaking off to play a high-stakes pool tournament, while his shiksa wife (the late, veteran actress Hannelore Elsner) desperately tries to pass them off as observant Jews.

Patently ridiculous and undeniably charming, Go for Zucker is winner of the Ernst Lubitsch Award for Best German Comedy, and six Lola Awards (the German Oscars) including Best Film and Best Director.

The extraordinary lives of the husband and wife duo who together authored the beloved Curious George books are recounted in the 2017 film Monkey Business: The Adventures of Curious George's Creators.

It has been 75 years since Curious George first touched the hearts and minds of children around the world, but little is known about his creators, Hans and Margret Rey. German Jews living in Paris during the rise of Nazism, the couple narrowly escaped Hitler’s troops by fleeing on makeshift bicycles they rode across Europe, carrying the yet-to-be-published Curious George manuscript with them. Forced to live in Brazil while they awaited visas to the United States, Hans and Margret eventually sailed into New York’s harbor to start life anew and create a children’s book classic. The journey of Hans and Margret Rey is brought vividly to life in this mixed-media documentary, which augments interviews with original hand-drawn animations, as well as a treasure trove of archival materials from the Rey estate, including wartime journals, photographs, letters and unpublished Curious George sketches and notes.

Israel’s official entry for the 2014 Best Foreign Film Oscar, Bethlehem is an intricate, tick-tock cliffhanger centered on the tragic relationship between an Israeli intelligence officer and his Palestinian informant.

Shadi Mar’i gives an award-winning performance as Sanfur, a hot-headed Palestinian teenager who feels overshadowed by older brother Ibrahim (Hisham Suliman), a militant local hero wanted for orchestrating suicide bombings in Israel. Conflicted and vulnerable, young Sanfur is exploited by Israel’s Shin Bet security service and fatherly intel agent Razi (Tsahi Halevy) who establishes a fragile bond with him. As an Israeli plot to assassinate Ibrahim heats up, and conflict erupts among Palestinian factions, loyalties are tested and pressure mounts, leading to a gut-wrenching climax.

Shifting between streetwise Israeli and Palestinian viewpoints, this morally complex story achieves added authenticity by the experiences of first-time writer-director Yuval Adler who served in Israeli military intelligence, and co-writer Ali Waked, a Palestinian journalist. Nominated for 12 Israeli Academy Awards, Bethlehem garnered wins for Best Film, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Supporting Actor and Best Editing.

Olympic Pride, American Prejudice, screened at the 2017 AJFF, examines the complex racial politics of the 1936 Summer Games in Nazi Germany, as experienced by the trailblazing but largely forgotten athletes most impacted.

Facing its own socioeconomic unrest at home due to the Great Depression and segregationist laws, the U.S. was torn between boycotting and competing in Hitler’s Olympics. As Nazi policies persecuting minorities and promoting Aryan superiority intensified, a national debate erupted over sending 18 African-American athletes and their Jewish counterparts to Berlin. Most ironic and surprising, is not the actions of Germans, but the implicit bias of U.S. Olympic officials in the dispute, and the discrimination that awaited black athletes upon their return. The victorious American team, however, emerges as a symbol of the racial equality the Nazis loathed, paving the way for the Civil Rights movement to come.

Narrated by actor-producer Blair Underwood, Olympic Pride, American Prejudice uses a wealth of rarely seen archival materials, and interviews with sports historians, spectators and Olympians, past and present.

Screening includes a post-film Q&A with filmmaker Deborah Riley Draper.

A perfect storm of matrimonial disharmony ensues in My First Wedding, a fast-paced screwball comedy, screened at the 2013 AJFF, from Argentine director Ariel Winograd, which lampoons romantic illusions, religious differences and the politics of the proverbial “Big Day.”

A terrified Adriån (Daniel Hendler) and his uptight bride-to-be Leonora (Natalia Oreiro)—a secular Jew and a lapsed Catholic—have finally reached their wedding ceremony. Told in flashback, the trouble begins when the groom clumsily loses the wedding rings, setting in motion a series of white lies and increasingly desperate delay tactics that bring out the worst in the betrothed couple. Replete with a cast of eccentric and feuding family members, troublemaking ex-lovers, and the theological musings of a priest and rabbi who are diverted from the wedding venue, this comedy of errors heads down a path chock full of misunderstanding and disaster.

Sure to leave audiences smiling, My First Wedding was nominated for four Argentine Academy Awards and is one of that country’s biggest recent box office hits.

The Atlanta Jewish Film Festival is an independent non-profit arts organization that continues an active partnership with its founding agency,
American Jewish Committee. Both organizations share a common commitment to strengthen Jewish life and foster intergroup understanding among
Atlanta's diverse cultural, ethnic and religious populations.

Need Help With Ticketing

Tickets go on sale to the public beginning Monday, January 27 at 10:00 AM EST.

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The Standby List

If you are unable to secure tickets to the desired screening in advance, try the standby list. Those wishing to add their name to the standby list can do so in person, on the day of the screening at the theater venue. No email or phone requests will be accepted. Unoccupied seats will be released at show time, as available.